


birds singing in the sycamore tree

by gracelinne



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, also holtz has a nipple ring and erin LOSES IT, erin realizes holtz smells nice and can't deal anymore, excessive abuse of italics, holtz embroiders cacti onto her pants when she's tired, in which erin is All Of Us, sharing of beds!!!!!!!!, sharing of clothes!!!!, sharing of feelings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelinne/pseuds/gracelinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin has anxiety and trouble sleeping. Holtzmann has a #1 DAD mug and a bed. They figure some stuff out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birds singing in the sycamore tree

**Author's Note:**

> fuck okay so i only remembered AFTER i’d written all of the cat-related stuff that abby is like super allergic but i really liked it so let’s pretend she’s not

There are many things that make Erin Gilbert anxious. Among these are ghosts, Holtzmann around an open flame, and boats. There are many more, but these are the most relevant.

These anxiety-inducing situations have not yet coincided. On September twenty-ninth (the day any and all belief Erin had in a Greater Power crumbles), they coincide. 

It starts at ten o’clock in the morning. Erin is just trying to get some reading done in her room at the firehouse when the siren goes off and Holtzmann hurls herself past Erin’s door, halfway into her jumpsuit already. Erin closes her eyes briefly and suits up, picking her boots up to carry them with her into the shared living space.

“You gotta hurry up, man,” says Patty, already dressed and by the door. Her proton pack is slung over her shoulders. Erin frowns.

“Why?” she asks, sticking her feet into her boots. Abby looks at her with no small degree of sympathy.

“We’re gonna miss boarding,” Holtzmann says gleefully. Dread creeps up Erin’s spine but she sets her jaw and follows Patty out the door into the Ecto-1. Kevin waves distractedly from his desk as they pass, busy with something on his phone. 

The ghost is on a boat. Erin knows this, but the shock of anxiety in her stomach is almost painful when Holtzmann pulls into a port. The boat in question is empty, the passengers all crowded around the boarding ramp. Erin can see a sinister green glow seeping from the windows and her stomach performs a sickly flop. It’s been almost a year since the Aldridge Mansion haunting, and Erin still gets inordinately anxious when confronted with a ghost. She takes a long breath in through her nose. Holtzmann puts the car in park.

The boat is fairly small, and they corner the ghost in a matter of minutes. By all accounts, it should have been a fairly easy bust. But there’s something wrong about the way the air smells, and when Holtzmann stumbles backward from the recoil of her proton gun, she knocks into a rickety wooden table, topped by a lit oil lamp. 

It is at this exact moment that Erin realizes where she recognizes the wrongness of the air from. “It’s gas,” she cries, flinging herself towards the door. “There’s gas on the floor!” She sees Holtzmann’s eyes widen slightly, and then the lamp hits the floor. The glass chimney shatters. Flames spill out onto the greasy wooden floorboards and catch, spreading quickly and growing in height. 

Holtzmann bolts away from the flames, nearly colliding with Patty by the door. The ghost roars. Erin fumbles behind her for the fire extinguisher she was _sure_ she’d seen on the way in — she finds it, hands shaking, and pulls the pin. It sprays the floorboards with white foam, smothering the flames. One thing down, one thing to go.

Patty fires her proton gun, ensnaring it around the waist, one of its arms tangled in the beam. Abby shoots at the same time as Erin, their proton beams hitting it in nearly the same spot. It screams one more time and explodes into a nebula of ectoplasm. 

“Eugh,” Erin says, wiping ectoplasm out of her eyes. Holtzmann gets to her feet from where she’d fallen, the cuffs of her jumpsuit pants singed. Her hair is coming out of its spectacular riot and her goggles have slid to the very end of her nose. She’s grinning, her left hand rubbing the back of her head.

“You okay?” asks Abby. Holtz nods, wincing. Erin’s nerves have not gone down since the ghost exploded, but she feels a bit better knowing Holtzmann’s okay. 

“Let’s go,” says Patty fervently, “I am _not_ excited about telling the owner of this boat we almost burned it down.”

So they file off the boat, Holtzmann limping only slightly, leaning on Erin only a little bit. The whole bust took less than fifteen minutes, and when confronted about the weird flickering orange light seen through the windows, Abby tells the boat owner quickly and quietly about the low-risk fire that burned for thirty seconds and was extinguished before it could do any real damage. 

“Are you good to drive?” Erin asks Holtzmann, pausing before the Ecto-1. Holtz rolls her eyes and swings into the driver’s seat, looking up at Erin through the windshield.

“Yes, mom,” she says, grinning with only half her mouth. Erin takes a steadying breath and slides into the passenger seat.

The drive home is a bit haphazard, but for the most part they make it in one piece. Kevin waves at them as they troupe in, sticky and exhausted and mildly singed. Erin just wants to sit down with a huge mug of cider and watch a cozy movie. Her back hurts from the proton pack.

“Hey, Gilbert, can you toss me that?” Holtzmann says, pointing at a suspicious red aerosol can. Erin picks it up cautiously with two fingers and hands it to Holtzmann, who shakes it and flicks the cap off with her thumb. “Look, fellas, I dreamed this up after our dear Erin here got ectoplasm all in her hair and it took three showers to get out. You remember?” she asks Erin, who nods, remembering this situation all too well. “Anyway, you spray this, you know, sort of aerosol powder on the ectoplasm —” she demonstrates on a particularly doomed patch of her jumpsuit “— and it comes _right_ off.” Sure enough, the ectoplasm virtually disintegrates, leaving only a mildly soggy spot.

Erin has never before been so distracted by someone pressing the release on an aerosol, so she’s not sure what she misses, but when she zones back in, the group is debating dinner.

“Can we order pizza?” Abby asks the room in general. 

“Only if Erin agrees to leave her trash pineapple off,” Holtzmann says, diligently spraying the Ecto-B-Gone on Patty’s jumpsuit.

“Pineapple pizza is not that bad!” Erin protests, but weakly. She can’t find it in her to be terribly offended, because Holtzmann looks to be gearing up for a long and glorious argument about the merit of pineapple on pizza or lack thereof.

“Shut up, I’m ordering,” says Abby, phone pressed to her ear. She ends up ordering a half avocado half bell pepper pizza, much to the protests of Patty and Holtzmann. Under duress, she orders a bacon and sausage one for them with a side order of crispy garlic knots.

When the pizza comes, Erin takes an avocado slice and cues up a couple movies on the TV. The entirety of _Legally Blonde_ plays without anyone really paying attention, but by the time _The Princess Diaries_ starts, they’ve mostly all gathered on the couch, pizza slices and mugs of lemonade in hand. It’s cozy, even when Kevin falls asleep on Abby and there’s a quiet and impassioned scuffle to get him off her, and even though Holtzmann has a homemade brace wrapped around her ankle and there’s a bruise blooming dark on Abby’s forehead, they’re safe, for now, and that’s pretty much all Erin cares about.

 

The first time Holtzmann calls Erin “ghost girl”, they’re engaged in a lively debate about hummus. Erin is drying dishes while Holtzmann sits on one of the barstools at the island, somehow cross-legged even though the stool’s circumference is maybe fifteen inches, max. Holtz is eating pita chips out of the bag, and Erin isn’t really sure if the hummus in front of her is for the chips or just to eat with a spoon — she’s seen Holtz eat it both ways. She says that she once lied and told a babysitter she was allergic to hummus to get out of eating it, and Holtz gets a half-amused, half-horrified look on her face. Really, it just looks as if she’s about to sneeze. They’ve been debating hummus for almost fifteen minutes now, and Erin thinks she could do it for much longer.

“The upshot of it is that hummus is _bullshit_ ,” she says resolutely, taking a plate out of the dishwasher and giving it a quick swipe with a dishrag. Holtzmann gives a derisive snort.

“I mean, _okay_ , ghost girl, your _opinions_ are bullshit but whatever.” Erin tenses up so quickly that she drops a mug. It shatters on the floor, its breaking the only sound in the now-silent kitchen. Holtzmann stops short, her playful grin sliding off her face. 

“Wait, shit, Erin, I’m sorry,” she starts, but Erin takes a deep breath and shakes her head. 

“It’s not a big deal. I need to get over it,” she mutters, crouching to pick up the pieces of the mug. Holtz comes around the island and kneels to help. She looks up at Erin, apologetic and earnest.

“I didn’t know it was still a thing for you, otherwise I wouldn’t have said it,” Holtz says. She stands, hands full of ceramic shards. Erin smiles briefly up at her, still a little on edge, still a little tender. 

The name stings, even when Holtz says it through a smile. Erin can’t help but remember the jeering tone it was always said in — “there’s ghost girl,” people would shout, “got any new ghost stories for us?” There were days when she would very seriously consider punching someone in the face. Eventually she did; Chad Baker had called her ghost girl one time too many, and she’d swung around and socked him right on the hinge of his jaw. He’d smirked at her and hit her back, right on the cheekbone, and then he’d sauntered away. 

She’d been left there in the hall as it emptied. She missed macroeconomics, instead standing over a running faucet in the girl’s bathroom, dabbing at the split skin with a wet wad of toilet paper. Panic had been hot in her throat as she considered risk of infection — the split came from Chad’s class ring, too large and too heavy, really, and who knew where it had been — so she’d clenched her jaw and smeared hand sanitizer on the cut on her face, refusing to wince even though it stung like bees, and then she’d gotten a detention for skipping because Nancy Galbraith had told Mr Shaughnessy that Erin was here and wasn’t coming to class on purpose.

But Holtz couldn’t have known that. Erin leans against the cabinets and breathes. Tries to remember how to be a real person. She doesn’t remember closing her fingers around a large piece of ceramic, but when she opens her hand, there’s blood staining her skin. 

“Shit,” she says, detached. Holtzmann looks down at her and her eyebrows shoot up almost to her hairline.

“ _Dude,_ ” Holtz says, wetting a hand towel and crouching next to Erin. She takes the shard out of Erin’s hand and dabs the cut gently, forehead creased. “What happened? I was just throwing away the mug and I look down at you and you’re _bleeding_ , how did you even manage that? Jesus.” Erin hisses quietly through her teeth.

“I didn’t really mean to,” she gets out. “I just, you know. In high school it was really bad. And one time I got fed up and I punched a guy in the face. He got me right back, split my cheekbone open. I have all these negative associations with people calling me ghost girl.” She presses her lips together and shakes her head. Holtzmann pauses her ministrations and looks up at Erin. “I just need to get over it.”

“I won’t say it again,” Holtz tells her, too soft. Erin snorts.

“Nah, you can call me ghost girl all you want,” she says. She doesn’t want to have this conversation right now, but she needs Holtzmann to know that it’s okay, that she didn’t do anything wrong.

“Alright, ghost girl,” Holtzmann says, grinning. She drops a lascivious wink and Erin feels better, less like she’s just bared her soul and more like it’s a normal day with a little too much blood. 

“By the way, hummus is wrong and you are wrong for liking it,” Erin says. Holtzmann makes an incredulous noise and rolls her eyes. She smiles.

“I cannot _believe_ I took care of you in your _time of need_ and you _betray me_ like this,” Holtz protests loudly, flinging the wet hand towel to the floor. Erin laughs.

“Oh for the love of god, did you assholes break something?” Patty says from the doorway. Holtzmann rocks back onto her heels and stands, turning to grin at Patty. 

“We broke so much shit, Patty,” she says gleefully. Patty just shakes her head and leaves. Holtzmann nods. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

 

Erin’s heightened sensitivity to anything Holtzmann-related betrays her on October eighth. It’s a particularly cold day, the kind of day Erin gets a little too excited for, pulling out her favorite chunky-knit green scarf and thick socks. It’s probably too early for them, but she doesn’t really care. She revels in the cozy warmth of burying her nose deep into the soft yarn. 

The only thing Erin finds she misses about not living where she works is the morning walk in — granted, when she was at Columbia she didn’t always have the best commute, and it got fairly expensive, but on autumn mornings one of her favorite things to do is stop at a coffee shop and get a hot cider. So on October eighth, she slides down the fire pole, clad in her warm jacket and scarf, and says, “I’m going to get a cider, anyone want anything?”

Abby’s face lights up. She marks her page in the thick book she’d been reading and puts it down. 

“Holy shit I forgot about this,” she half-whispers, grinning widely. Erin shrugs nonchalantly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says casually. Abby steps closer. Her grin isn’t subsiding. Erin feels very nervous and defensive all of a sudden.

“What’s happening,” Holtzmann says quietly to Patty, who makes a sort of ‘I don’t know’ noise. Holtz props her chin on her hand and looks at Erin and Abby with no small amount of interest.

“Erin is, like, sexually attracted to fall,” Abby says, halfway to laughter. Erin frowns. This is unfair.

“That’s, uh. That’s not fair,” she mutters. She looks away from Abby. “Anyway. I’m going to get cider. Does anyone. Want anything.” Holtzmann cackles from where she’s standing beside Patty, but Erin can’t tell if that’s due to Abby’s taunts or if she’s congratulating herself on a wire job well done. Honestly, it could be either. 

“Nah, you know what, I’m good,” says Patty, turning back to her book. “I had my breakfast already.” Holtzmann looks up at Erin, wrinkling her nose to keep her goggles from sliding off. 

“I’ll have an apple donut if you can swing it, boss,” she says. There’s a screwdriver sticking out of her hair. Erin tears her eyes away from it and nods abruptly. She leaves the firehouse distractedly, stumbles her way down the steps and stops at the bottom to take a deep breath before opening the door onto the street.

Her favorite cider place is just a couple of blocks away from the firehouse, which makes her feel a bit like she’s been cheated of her leisurely stroll through chilly air. She flexes her fingers as she walks, fingerless gloves soft and musty-smelling after months in storage. There’s a bite to the air that Erin is _living for,_ craning her neck back and letting the cold air brush gently over her face. 

Once she gets to the coffee place, she buys her hot cider and Holtzmann’s apple donut and sits on a bench outside, savoring the warmth of the cup in her hands. She loves her friends, but sometimes it’s nice to get out of the too-close atmosphere of the firehouse, where there is never a moment to herself.

Even when she does get a moment alone, there’s the constant reminder that she lives with three other women, one of whom is unknowingly making Erin have Feelings that she’d never planned for. 

They share clothes, a lot of the time — it’s hard to keep everyone’s stuff separated, especially since they alternate laundry duty. Sometimes Erin will put on a particularly soft, worn t-shirt and realize hours later that it’s Holtzmann’s, her skin scented, now, like something spicy and burning. It always leaves her wondering if that’s what Holtzmann smells like, enticing and infuriating. 

But now, sitting on a bench outside a café, Erin savors her cider and tries her best not to think about Holtzmann. It doesn’t really work — she thinks the Rolling Stones shirt she’s wearing is probably not her own, is too softened by years of use to be hers. 

Her cider is half gone by the time she stands to walk back to the firehouse. It’s a beautiful walk and she wants to make the most of it before going back to the chaotic whirlwind of their workspace, especially now, when she would much rather be outside. 

“Are you done making googly eyes at fall yet?” calls Abby as Erin reenters the firehouse. Erin ignores this, closing the door behind her.

“Are you done with your face,” she mutters, walking toward the knot of women clustered around the table. Holtzmann’s goggles have been pushed to rest on the top of her hair and she’s got a smudge of something dark and chalky on her cheekbone. Patty looks more or less the same; she is further along in her book and there’s a small patch of her cardigan that is smoking slightly, but otherwise she looks unfazed. Abby is no longer reading, instead on her laptop, scrolling through free cat ads. 

“You missed it,” Holtzmann says, turning to Erin, “Abby decided we’re getting a station cat. It’s a terrible idea.” Abby frowns pointedly and flips her computer around, shoving a picture of a tiny gray kitten in Holtzmann’s face.

“ _You_ tell _me_ that _this tiny kitten_ is a bad idea,” she says sharply. Holtzmann shrugs, and for the first time Erin notices what she’s wearing.

It’s remarkable simply for the reason that it’s completely unremarkable. Holtzmann never wears simple black leggings or overlarge sweaters in a very specific shade of turquoise that, Erin realizes, is hers. She flushes (what a dumb thing to flush over; she’s wearing one of Holtzmann’s t-shirts and it’s no different, really). 

“I, ah. I got your donut,” she says into the kitten-induced silence, stepping forward to hand it to Holtzmann, who twists to grab it and freezes, wide-eyed.

“Shit,” Holtzmann says through gritted teeth. She hisses in pain and Erin stops, unsure of what’s even happening, let alone what to do. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” 

“What’s going on, what’s wrong,” Erin starts. Holtzmann just closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose.

“Sweaters don’t exactly, um. They can be problematic when dealing with, ah, nipple rings,” Holtzmann says, and Erin’s brain stops working. She’s pretty sure everything whites out for a second. Her feet are too cold and her face is too hot.

Holtzmann is wearing Erin’s sweater. And, evidently, no bra. And also she has a nipple ring. Erin puts the donut down on the table in front of Holtzmann and _bolts_ , ignoring Abby and Patty looking up from what they’re doing to frown at her in confusion. She almost trips on three of the stairs heading up to her room and of course, she thinks sardonically, wouldn’t that just be perfect right now. 

When she gets to her room, she shuts the door behind her and takes a long, long breath. It’s an infuriating image, the one in her head, because it won’t go away — Holtzmann with a nipple ring. _Jesus_.

There’s a harsh knocking on the door that startles Erin. She jumps back, landing on a textbook that crunches suspiciously. 

“What the hell was that?” comes Abby’s voice from through the door. “What the fuck, Usain Bolt? Are you competing in a competition to be the weirdest fucko in all of the world?” Erin opens the door to come face to face with Abby, who doesn’t look particularly amused.

“I remembered I left my curling iron plugged in,” Erin tries, but Abby shakes her head. 

“You have never in your entire life curled your hair. Was it about Holtzmann wearing your sweater? Because you can’t be weird about your clothes being worn only by you, you’re literally wearing Holtzmann’s Rolling Stones shirt right now,” Abby says. Erin knows she’s right, but she wants the easy excuse. 

“I didn’t, um. I didn’t know Holtz had any piercings,” she says, not entirely looking at Abby. Enough that she sees the look of relief cross her face. Abby leans on the doorframe, looking searchingly at Erin.

“Yeah, I think she’s just got her ears and also the nipple ones,” Abby says, and Erin’s brain stops working again, because Abby just used a plural and she doesn’t know what to do with that. She nods, like she knows what’s happening.

“I’ll be right down, sorry for being weird,” she says, and Abby looks like she’s glad she averted a crisis. Erin closes the door when she leaves and collapses onto her bed.

“Mother _fuck_ ,” she mutters. 

The thing about Erin is that she doesn’t quite know how to deal with Feelings. She’s never been good at it. She realized she was bisexual in college, but she’s never had a really serious partner of any gender, and it’s harder now to reconcile the romantic feelings she’s having towards Holtzmann because they work together, they live together, their lives are so intertwined that Erin can barely distinguish between their belongings anymore. 

It’s probably best that she never tell anyone about this ever. Especially since she promised Abby she’d come back down.

“Erin, we need your help,” says Abby as Erin comes down the stairs. She turns her computer around to show Erin a very small, very orange cat. “Tell Holtzmann we should adopt Hillary Kitten to be our station cat.” Holtzmann is tinkering with something relatively small, her piercing crisis apparently over and done with. The donut is nowhere to be seen, but its paper wrapping is still on her table.

“Hillary Kitten,” Patty snorts derisively. She’s started on a new book. “I mean, really.”

“Hey,” Holtzmann says, “Hillary Clinton is a _powerhouse_ of a woman, leave her alone.” Patty shakes her head and turns a page. 

“I hate to say this, but I think Holtz is right,” says Erin. Holtzmann whoops and punches the air. Abby sends Erin a look of betrayal and also possibly nausea. “Look, I love cats as much as the next person, but we live in a fire station with _nuclear weaponry_ downstairs. Also, Kevin leaves the door open all the time, and Hillary Kitten would probably get out.” She feels bad, seeing Abby’s face — she knows Abby has wanted a cat pretty much since birth, but it’s just not a good idea. Abby shrugs casually. Erin feels like she’ll wake up to some sort of revenge someday soon. 

But watching Holtzmann celebrate, she finds that she doesn’t really care about the revenge.

 

Erin doesn’t sleep too well anymore. It’s not necessarily a new thing — most of her teenage years had been fairly sleepless — but with Abby, through college, she’d slept much better. She thought it was mostly the fact that she was out of the house, away from old memories and furtive, concerned glances between her parents. Now she can barely sleep again, instead preferring to watch old episodes of The X-Files or read familiar, comfortable books. 

The nice thing about the firehouse is that Erin is rarely the only person awake at any given time. Holtzmann often works late, and even when Holtzmann is asleep, the machinery gives the firehouse a cozy feeling, like it’s alive and keeping her company.

The not-so-nice thing about the firehouse is that there are innumerable places to hide. On this particular night, Erin is sure she’s alone — she shuffles exhaustedly out of her room to the living area, tossing her book and laptop carelessly onto the couch and heading into the kitchen. 

She hums tunelessly as she makes tea and toasts a croissant. The fact that Holtz’s favorite mug is missing from the mug cabinet— the one that says #1 DAD on it that Abby got her — should probably tip Erin off that she’s not the only one awake. But it doesn’t, and she stays unaware, slathering her toasted croissant in cocoa-almond spread from Trader Joe’s. 

“X-Files?” The voice behind her makes her jump about eight feet in the air. “Sorry, thought you knew I was here.” Erin turns to see Holtzmann, sprawled in Patty’s overstuffed armchair with her #1 DAD mug balancing on her knee. A book is open in her lap. It looks like one of the Harry Potters.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Holtz, you _scared_ me,” Erin says breathlessly, hand pressed to her chest. Her heart is going a million miles an hour, and she can’t tell if that’s down to the surprise or the fact that Holtzmann looks soft and warm, ensconced in a knit blanket that came from Erin’s apartment. 

“Sorry,” Holtzmann says again. “Are you watching The X-Files? Also, why are you up at one forty-seven in the morning?” Erin puts her croissant and tea down on the table in front of the couch and sits, twisting to face Holtz. 

“I can’t sleep,” she says. Holtz nods like that’s the response she’d expected. She stands from the chair, abandoning her book and bringing her mug with her. As she settles onto the couch, strangely serene and calm, Erin can smell her, spicy and burning and intoxicating. 

“So let’s watch some X-Files,” Holtz says, throwing her blanket around Erin’s shoulders to include her in the tiny oasis of comfort she has created. Erin leans against her and clicks play.

Halfway through the first episode, Erin starts yawning. She’s exhausted — her eyes are barely staying open and her entire body feels heavy with sleep. But she knows if she lets herself go to bed, the nightmares will come back. Old Mrs DeMille, eyes hollow and fingers reaching, will stand at the foot of her bed again, pulling her back to a time when the only constant in her life was fear. She would rather stay here, curled together with Holtz on this couch, even if she has to fight sleep.

“Hey, ghost girl, we can go to bed if you want,” Holtz says as Erin yawns for the fourth time. Erin shakes her head.

“I can’t,” she says, focusing on the TV. 

“You’re having nightmares, aren’t you.” It’s not a question. Holtz sits forward and looks at Erin. There’s no room here for Erin to bullshit her way out. She swallows.

“Yeah,” she says. Her hand is on Holtz’s knee. She splays her fingers out across the pale skin and notes the contrast there. “I keep seeing Mrs DeMille. Just standing there and watching me. And people I love, hurt or dead — Patty, and Abby, and Kevin, and — and you, Holtz, and I can’t _see_ that every night, I can’t.” Her voice breaks and she doesn’t want to cry, so she looks at Holtz. 

Holtz looks like she’s thinking hard, and then she puts her stupid mug down on the coffee table and stands, holding a hand out to Erin. “Come on,” she says. “You’re going to get some sleep.” Erin shakes her head; she doesn’t want to have a panic attack in front of Holtzmann. She’s had them in front of Abby before, but no one else, and even that was mortifying. “You have to sleep, Erin,” says Holtzmann, uncharacteristically gentle.

“I don’t,” Erin starts, cutting herself off frustratedly. She doesn’t tell people about her anxiety and she doesn’t _want_ Holtzmann to know, doesn’t want the pity that she’s sure will come, like it always does. “I don’t want to have a panic attack in front of you,” she manages. She doesn’t look at Holtzmann.

“You know I can help you with your panic attack if you have one, right?” Holtzmann says, grabbing Erin’s hand and pulling her up. “My sister used to have them all the time. I got really good at calming her down.” 

Erin realizes, too late, that letting Holtzmann pull her up from the couch means that they’re face to face. She’s a good three inches taller than Holtz, which never seemed like much of a difference until right now at this exact second. There’s a frozen breath of tension between them, but it breaks when Erin yawns.

“Come on,” Holtzmann says, pulling Erin towards the staircase leading to the third floor. The bedrooms are up here, and Erin feels herself tensing as they approach her room, but they pass it, heading for Holtzmann’s room, on the end.

Erin has never been in Holtzmann’s room. She always sort of assumed it would be a disaster, and she’s a little bit right, but it’s an organized mess, with tiny lightbulbs on strings the only source of light. There’s some sort of machine in the corner, which Erin doesn’t necessarily want to investigate right now, and the whole place smells just like Holtzmann but more intense, and Erin feels like simply by being here she’s intruding.

“I don’t want to be an imposition,” she says. Holtz just looks at her for a moment, searching her face like she’s trying to figure out if Erin is kidding. 

“Look, clearly something’s going on with you, and I don’t know if it’s your room that’s making you have nightmares or what, but I want to help you, okay?” Holtz steps back slightly. Erin nods sharply, suddenly very aware of the fact that she is in Holtzmann’s _bedroom._ Holtzmann makes a motion towards the bed and Erin slides under the covers, only a little bit flustered.

“Thank you,” says Erin quietly. “For, you know. Helping.” Holtzmann turns over; she can feel the movement at her back. 

“Of course, ghost girl,” Holtz says back, voice barely above a whisper. “Also, I wanted to run something by you really quickly.” Erin pauses and tries to ignore the anxiety already starting to creep up her throat. “There was, um. There was a study done where some professors tracked the sleep patterns of people sleeping alone and people sleeping together and people sleeping together and touching. The results showed that people who, who sleep together and touch end up sleeping much better and I, ah. I thought that might help you, if you were okay with it.” 

Erin can feel her anxiety subside, replaced with a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. She takes a deep breath (she’s momentarily distracted by the faint spicy smell of Holtz) and then nods.

It takes a second, but then there’s a warm arm around her waist, and Holtzmann is pressed along her back, knees fitting behind Erin’s, breath soft and warm against the back of her neck. Erin is surrounded by the intoxicating scent of Holtzmann. She closes her fingers around Holtz’s wrist, stopping for a moment at the delicate bone that’s prominent at the base of her hand.

“I broke that when I was five,” murmurs Holtz. “Radius and ulna. Crushed both of ‘em, both wrists. Fell off a swing. Made some wings and thought I could fly.” Erin laughs, imagining tiny Holtz, hair already a blonde nebula, wearing yellow goggles too big for her face, launching herself into the air and expecting to fly on a pair of homemade wings.

“Icarus,” says Erin, and Holtz laughs too, low in her throat and muffled by Erin’s hair.

“Goodnight, ghost girl,” Holtz says, almost too quietly for Erin to hear.

“Goodnight, Holtz,” Erin whispers back. 

 

Erin wakes up with arms around her waist and someone breathing long, slow breaths behind her. She blinks blearily for a moment before remembering yes, this is Holtzmann’s room and these arms are, indeed, Holtzmann’s. Her fingers are still circled loosely around Holtzmann’s wrist, thumb resting on her pulse. The skin beneath Erin’s fingers is paler than the rest of it, and it occurs to Erin that this is where Holtzmann’s watch usually is. There’s a dark smudge only just visible beneath Erin’s thumb and she moves it to see — it’s a tiny tattoo of a honeybee, barely larger than Erin’s thumbprint.

“My sister,” Holtz says, voice scratchy with sleep. Erin looks over her shoulder, twisting as far as she comfortably can. 

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” whispers Erin. It feels sacrilegious to speak above a whisper in here, with the dust motes swirling languidly in the light streaming through the windows. “Or a sister, actually.”

“I got my tattoo when I lost my sister,” says Holtz. “She had, um. She had leukemia. She was fourteen when she died. I was nineteen.” Erin doesn’t know what to say. She drags her thumb across the tattoo instead of saying anything, focusing on the tiny details of the spread wings, the tiny hooked feet.

“What was her name?” she whispers. Holtz smiles tightly.

“Beatrix. Bee for short. Honeybee.” Erin turns over completely, sleep still hazy in the corners of her mind, and looks Holtzmann in the eyes.

“My dad died,” she hears herself saying. “When I was thirteen. Had a stroke. I know it’s not the same, but I, you know. I know what it’s like.” Holtzmann smiles briefly and rests her forehead on Erin’s collarbones. Before she knows it, Erin’s drifted back to sleep, a warm fuzzy kind of sleep that she hasn’t had since before Mrs DeMille died. 

When she wakes again, she’s flat on her back with Holtzmann curled halfway on top of her. Holtz’s left hand is flat against Erin’s ribcage. There’s a tenuous stillness to the room, a delicate balance of silence and warmth and comfort that’s intensified by Holtz’s nose pressed into the side of her neck, breath coming in tiny puffs against her skin. 

The silence is broken when someone knocks abruptly on the door. Erin jumps halfway out of her skin, waking Holtzmann, who sits up at the same time as Erin. It takes a moment for them to realize that Holtz is sitting on Erin’s lap.

“Holtzmann, where the fuck is Erin? She’s not in her room,” Abby calls from the hall. Holtz makes a tiny, half-asleep noise of frustration and wraps her arms around Erin’s waist, tucking her head under Erin’s chin.

Erin wants to stay here, in this comfortable bubble, wrapped around Holtz, forever.

“ _Holtzmann!”_ yells Abby. 

“I don’t know!” Holtzmann yells back. “Have you checked, um. The cider place?” There’s a hushed debate from the hall, and then Patty says,

“We’re gonna go check the cider place, let us know if you hear from her.” Holtzmann mumbles some kind of assent, eyes still closed.

“We have ten minutes max before they realize you’re not there,” Holtzmann whispers. She’s still tucked under Erin’s chin. Erin falls back onto the bed, taking Holtz with her. “We should probably get up and be actual human people.” 

“Probably,” Erin agrees. Holtz sits up and slides out of the bed. It is only now that Erin realizes she’s not wearing pants, and she loses some brain function momentarily.

Holtzmann in the mornings is something Erin has seen a few times, but never this way, never as she’s just woken up and gotten out of bed, hair unstyled and soft. She isn’t wearing any makeup and there’s a freckle under her right eye that Erin has never noticed before.

Erin takes a minute to breathe as Holtz steps into her bathroom (she’s wearing a shirt that’s just a little too small and a pair of burgundy underwear, which Erin is pretty sure will to haunt her forever). She throws her legs off the side of the bed, shivering when her feet make contact with the cement floor, and stands, entirely unsure of what to do here. After a moment of contemplation, she slips out the door, closing it behind her, and makes a hasty dash for her own room.

Her room, by comparison, feels dull. She looks with mild disappointment at her white walls, her white bedspread, her off-white pillows. 

“What the fuck, Gilbert,” she mutters, stripping her pajama shirt off and throwing it on the bed. It gives her a tiny jolt of satisfaction, seeing the crumpled orange fabric against the too-white duvet. It’s a little bit of Holtzmann here, a little center of chaos in a far too-calm place. The reverse eye of the storm. 

She gets dressed quickly, pausing only for a moment when she realizes the pants she’s pulling on aren’t hers; there’s a cactus stitched onto one of the back pockets, and they’re almost too short in the ankle. Of course they’re Holtzmann’s, she thinks resignedly, because it’s only seven thirty and that’s how today is going. She wears them anyway, because they give a sense of rebellion against her own strictly-ordered life.

“Hey, ghost girl,” says Holtzmann as Erin comes down the stairs into the kitchen. “You want breakfast? I mean, I wouldn’t trust me to make it, but I can try.” Erin shakes her head and wraps her hands in the too-long sleeves of her sweater. It’s chilly in the firehouse today, this mid-October morning, and she finds she wants nothing more than an apple donut.

“I’m going to go to the cider place,” she says. “Do you want to come?” There’s a beat of silence where she isn’t sure if Holtzmann will say yes, but a smile creeps over Holtz’s face and she nods.

“Just let me get my shoes and I’ll be right with you.” She bounds up the spiral staircase and clatters back down in a matter of seconds. “And we are off into the beyond!” 

The walk to the café is pleasant. It’s very chilly, far too cold for the way Holtzmann is dressed — thin t-shirt and corduroy overalls under some sort of long jacket — and Erin feels bad, so she ducks out of her scarf and slides it over Holtz’s head, careful not to snag it on her glasses. 

Holtzmann looks at her, surprised, and Erin half-shrugs. She doesn’t want to say anything about it, because explaining herself will take too long and will reveal too much. Seeing this, Holtz merely smiles and tucks her nose into the warm, dark-green yarn, relishing the coziness.

The café isn’t too full, especially considering that it’s only eight o’clock in the morning. Erin orders cider and an apple donut, and Holtzmann looks quietly at her for a moment before ordering the same thing. 

They sit on the bench outside, overlooking a tiny park riotous with autumn colors. There’s a comfortable silence between them, which, of course, Erin for some reason decides to break.

“Holtz?” she says under her breath, and then clears her throat and says it louder. “Holtz, I ah. I wanted to talk to you about. About something.” Holtz tears her gaze away from where she’d been watching a young girl beat her brother at swordplay (the swords are sticks) and looks at Erin.

“Shoot,” she says, tearing off a piece of her donut and chewing it. Erin swallows hard. 

“I have always had a diagnosis,” she starts, not entirely looking at Holtz. “I have always had very specific diagnoses of very specific kinds of anxiety but mostly they just boil down to the fact that my brain is always working; it is a very loud brain and most of the time I wish it would just be quiet because more often than not the brain noise is telling me to be nervous and afraid. When I was younger I tried to learn how to make my brain quiet and it didn’t work to the extent I wanted it to, but then I discovered physics and that was a different kind of brain noise, it was different but still _brain noise_ , I was never quiet —” she pauses to breathe, and then continues.

“But you, Holtz. You make me quiet.” She can’t look Holtz in the eye right now, _won’t_ , can barely believe she’s said so much about her anxiety, more than she’s said in years. 

“Hey,” says Holtzmann. “ _Hey_.” Erin feels fingers, gentle on her chin, and then she’s looking Holtz right in the eyes. “I try my best,” Holtz says quietly, and then she is kissing Erin, lips sticky and sweet with cinnamon and cider and apples, and Erin is kissing her back, her fingers curled around Holtz’s wrist where her watch usually goes.

It’s a sensory overload, kissing Holtzmann. There’s too much to take in, really, and Erin wants to lose herself in it, but Holtz is pulling back far too quickly. She drops a kiss on the tip of Erin’s nose and grins, taking a long sip of her cider. 

It is a cold, crisp day in mid-October. Holtzmann is lounging on a bench outside a café wearing Erin’s scarf, the one she made in college, the one she never lets anyone wear. She has intertwined her fingers with Erin’s, and they are both too chilly to be any kind of warmth to the other, but it’s the company, really.

Erin watches her and feels the word _home_ written on her bones.


End file.
